Changes for Special Raters

The regs also carry out several changes for special rate employees, who are white collar employees getting additional pay for being in occupations and/or locations where recruiting and retention is deemed difficult. These include: an employee’s entitlement to a special rate is eliminated if the employee is entitled to a higher rate of basic pay, such as a locality rate; the pay limitation on special rates is increased to the rate for level IV of the Executive Schedule ($140,300 in 2005), which is consistent with the pay limitation on locality rates; special rates are generally basic pay for the same purposes as locality rates; an agency may choose to exclude its employees from coverage under a proposed or existing special rate schedule after notifying OPM. The changes resulted in the elimination of about 100 special rate tables that had been overtaken by locality pay and the dropping of special rates at certain grades and steps of about 200 others; however, pay of those employees was not affected because of the policy that an individual would receive the higher of a special rate or locality pay, but not both.